Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad Read Online Free Page B

white and gray mess that bore little resemblance to the scrawny, pathetic thing it had been moments earlier.
    The cage crashed to the floor and the miracle above abated.
    The air thickened, breaths came back to me in gulps. I fell to my knees, staring and wondering and so grateful for what I’d been given.
    I checked the syringe. Half full—2.5 ccs. Not much, but a start toward something great.
    The ads could stay up on the web site. Even one customer a week would be enough. They wouldn’t even have to bring a loved one with them anymore, either. Not where they’d be going.
    So, two hundred sixty-five would be easy to hit. And after that goal was attained, there was still so much more to change, to mold, to sculpt.
    Whatever my heart’s desire.
    I could be the pinnacle of man.
    Adonis.
    Perfection.
     

 
    TAUT
     
    BY SHAUN MEEKS
     
     
    It was getting cold, or at least she felt it was. Her body swayed slightly, nausea coming in and moving out in waves. Tina didn’t want to throw up, what little there might be to bring up, afraid of dehydration as much as anything else. The sick feeling was a combination of a few things. No doubt, keeping her eyes closed wasn’t helping anything. Yet she didn’t want to open them; didn’t want to face the reality before her.
    The reality was, she was going to die.
    Cold.
    Alone.
    Her back throbbed and she bit back the pain she felt rippling across her body, bile burning the back of her throat. She wanted to cry out, scream, but there was no hope. Screaming and crying wouldn’t do anything but make her feel worse. There was nobody around that would hear her, so it would be useless to expend the energy.
    Tina wondered how James had found this place; an old, beat-up warehouse that stood like a decaying tooth in an equally rotting mouth. From the outside, the building was something from a bad horror movie, a lost building that seemed as though it would be haunted with malicious memories and putrid souls.
    When they had pulled up to it in James’ old sedan, Tina looked at the place and told herself there was no way she was stepping foot into a building that undoubtedly housed rats, bugs, and one or two homeless people. Some people would look at her dreads, piercings, brandings, and surface implants and think “A freak like her lives for places like this.” Those people, she thought, are idiots. Her body modifications didn’t mean she liked the macabre; she wasn’t into horror movies or shock value. Tina altered her body for spiritual reasons.
    James knew that. So why he had brought her out to this warehouse close to nightfall was beyond her. He had told her he had a surprise for her, an early birthday present.
    Right.
    “Here we are,” he said. He pulled his keys out and got out of the car. “You coming?”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Come on, T. You’ll love it!”
    James smirked at her, giving Tina that look that he knew melted her resolve.
    Bastard.
    She looked back at the building, a husk of its former self, appearing both too dark and too luminous in the fading light. Turning to look at James, she felt a trust in him that she had never felt in another, and had no idea why. He was no fairy tale, though. A string of fuck-ups led up to this moment, and he was sucking up large.
    Below her now, James is only visible in parts, where the moonlight breaks through broken window, walls, and a dilapidated ceiling. What she is seeing is enough though, as his destroyed body is being visited by a family of raccoons. She sways and can hear what she is happy not to be able to fully see. 
    Wet sounds.
    Hungry sounds.
    The sounds of noisy eaters, feasting on meat; feeding on her boyfriend. Even though she can’t see it, hearing the sounds, just able to make out his body jerking in and out of the shadows as the little animals tear away bits of him, would have been enough torture for her. She closes her eyes again, wishing she hadn’t trusted his smile; she blames herself almost